Etnografia e história das aldeias antigas do rio Kikwo, Pará, Brasil

Abstract

This dissertation, initially, brings a reflection about my experience in the middle of the non-Indigenous world. I was born, grew up and lived in the Mapuera village, north of the state of Pará, until I was 24 years old, when I moved to study in the city of Oriximiná (PA), started living with white people and learning to speak Portuguese. In this dissertation I will present a short discussion on indigenous archeologies, because I think that, before anything else, an academic work done by an indigenous person needs to dialogue with the history of indigenous peoples, needs to dialogue with theories, methodologies, and traditional knowledge. Based on the Wai Wai oral history, heard during a trip/expedition for fieldwork in early 2020, I describe the ancient villages located on the Kikwo River and the important places (where our ancestors walked) and present in the memory of my people. I consider that not only archeological artifacts are markers of indigenous cultures, but also the ancestral memory contained in oral histories. I bring here my father's account of the places on the Kikwo River, including ancient villages and settlements, those that were inhabited by our ancestors, as reported by the shaman Mapor̂o (my father Poriciwi's maternal grandfather) and passed on to my father. In another topic, I describe the traditional festivals of the Wai Wai people (called yamo, merpa, and xorwiko) that occurred frequently in those places until the arrival of Christian and American missionaries in the region around the 1950s. In those parties there was the participation of people from various villages, from near and far, weddings, exchange of objects and artifacts, a lot of dancing, and consumption of fermented beverages. Finally, I describe the departure of the Wai Wai from the old villages Yowtho, Wawkumîtî, and Ahrumîtî (located on the Kikwo River) to the mission village Kanaxen in southern Guyana and how the Wai Wai, converted by the missionaries in the village Kanaxen, organized expeditions to search for the isolated or unseen peoples (enîhnî komo) who still remained on the Brazilian side.